I live in Hong Kong where I'm opening a branch office of my digital marketing firm MWI, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. In addition to Forbes, my writing has also been published in Entrepreneur, Fast Company, VentureBeat, Business Insider, TechinAsia, and the South China Morning Post. I focus on entrepreneurship, startups, online marketing, and Asia. Born and raised through high school in Arcadia, California, I also spent two years at college in Idaho, two years in the Amazon as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons), and 15 years in Utah, first at Brigham Young University studying information systems management, and then working for various startups including a few of my own. In June, 2013 I moved to Hong Kong where I'm opening a branch office of my online marketing firm MWI and learning Cantonese and Mandarin with my wife and two children. My hobbies include skateboarding, triathlon, reading, and blogging. I write about entrepreneurship, startups, learning from success and failure, online marketing, innovation, and anything lean. If you have a question or suggestion, email me. I'm always looking for good ideas and great startups to write about.

Yesterday the news broke at a Google press event that the largest upgrade to its search algorithm since 2001, dubbed Hummingbird, had already rolled out last month. “Algorithm?” you ask. “Isn’t that the thing the determines how websites are ranked? And you say this is the biggest change in their algorithm in 12 years?! What about all my SEO work? Is it ruined? Do I have to change everything?” Rest easy, you don’t have to change anything about your SEO efforts, at least not if you’re already doing what you should have been doing all these years.

If you’re looking to get all the details on the Hummingbird update then head straight on over to Danny Sullivan’s Hummingbird FAQ at Search Engine Land or read the post by my fellow Forbes contributor Robert Hof. But if you just want to know what you need to do about Hummingbird, then I’ll save you the task of reading Sullivan or Hof’s posts (although I do highly encourage you read them, they’re both quite interesting) and cut to the chase. It comes near the end where Sullivan asks the question “Does this mean SEO is dead?” He answers:

No, SEO is not yet again dead. In fact, Google’s saying there’s nothing new or different SEOs or publishers need to worry about. Guidance remains the same, it says: have original, high-quality content. Signals that have been important in the past remain important; Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in new and hopefully better ways.

Nothing has changed. If you have original, high-quality content, and you have high-quality and relevant websites linking to your own website, then your website is still going to rank well. If anything, your website’s rankings will improve just as they should have after the Penguin and Panda updates rolled out.

The key to making the right decisions about SEO is to understand where Google is going. Google’s goal is that when someone creates a new search, what Google shows that person is exactly what the person wants or needs. We’ve all had the experience of searching on Google and seeing websites come up that obviously aren’t what we want. We don’t even need to click on the link to figure that out, because what Google shows us is enough. When this happens to me I think “Good heavens, why in the world would Google think that’s what I wanted when I typed in those words?” Google wants to get to the point where I never think that again. To lose sight of this goal would be the death of Google. This is, in part, why Google employs a few thousand PhDs.

Many people have been frustrated by Panda and Penguin, and they’ll now see Hummingbird in a negative light. Don’t fall into that trap. If you’re the best at what you do, these updates Google has been rolling out are opportunities to separate yourself from your competition. They may have been engaging in spammy tactics to get good rankings, but if you’ve been focusing on creating content that provides real value to potential customers, their days are numbered. These changes will help you rise above, and the good news, as mentioned above, is if you’ve been doing the right things for your SEO you don’t need to change a thing.

Have you seen any impact to your website(s) as a result of the Hummingbird update? Do you see any details in the update you feel will give you an advantage?

Update: After contacting Google’s press department I was informed that Google has been running Hummingbird “for a few months,” not just since last month. The press department also reiterated their guidance for those doing SEO, “Our guidance to webmasters is the same as always — we encourage original, high-quality content, since that’s what’s best for web users.”

Joshua Steimle is the CEO of MWI, a digital marketing agency with offices in the U.S. and Hong Kong.

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Hummingbird makes results more useful and relevant, especially when you ask Google long, complex questions.Hummingbird pays more attention to each word in the query, ensuring the whole query is taken into account ,so if a resulting page is a bit less strong in general, but it’s the most relevant to your search terms, that’s the result you’ll get.

Hi Joshua: I agree that it will not change much…if (but it is is a BIG if) you have been adding fresh content and your site has not just been sitting there collecting dust. I quoted your contribution here. I would love to hear your feedback.

I started a blog 2 months ago because I met a guy who could write amazing content. The stuff we make ranks very easily because the content is what people want to read and at the same time being high quality. :)

Interesting update though, I wonder if they will say anything about updating the PR toolbar.

Google wants to show user friendly search results that’s why google updating regularly.Still many black hat seo technique works and give the ranking to sites those are not user friendly. Every new google update supports the Quality work using original and high level content.So SEO’s who really follow white hat techniques don’t need to be worry according to me.For white hat seo services you can visit http://www.go4seoindia.com/

Great Post Steimle.. I want to share 2 things about this Humming Bird update

1. Unlike all the recent google algorithms, Humming Bird is a trend setter which avails the search users with more relevant information for their search. It doesn’t trigger major drops in the keyword ranks of existing SEO Campaigns.

2. When this Trend “machine (google) understands more about what the user looking for” reaches it’s peak, the goals of future campaigns going to be changed. But the only thing going to be the Core of all the algorithm updates is “Quality & Original Content”.

To present it in simple terms:

“If you want to sell something then give A to Z of information about that product/service to the users ( in the content )”

Thank you, Joshua. You are right that we tend to cringe about any major update announcement because of the shifting effects previous updates had on various websites. I previously found it challenging to convince SEO clients to include regular content writing with their campaigns, but my conversations are changing.

I’m surprised just how many digital agencies and ecommerce businesses seem surprised by the arrival of Hummingbird – search has been going this way for a while now. No one wants to bounce from endless unhelpful SERPs – especially not on mobile devices which are supposed to offer great convenience! Anyway, you can learn why the updates doesn’t spell the end for SEO here: http://www.freshegg.com/blog/google-hummingbird-game-changing-search-algorithm-update_18453

Great article, you hit it right on the head with the idea that if you’ve been doing things right already then you should see some your ranking go up with new algorithms and updates.

The general trend that I see with every Google update is rewarding people that are writing and sharing awesome content related to what they do and penalizing (or just devaluing) black-hat and grey-hat strategies that used to work.

Best think people can do to help themselves recover from bad SEO in the past is to write quality content and getting back in Google’s “good neighborhoods”. I’m not an expert on Google penalty recovery but there seem to be some good resources out there for doing that if necessary (e.g. link disavow tools).

This update has been great for me and my clients! It just validates that our SEO tactics are solid and withstand the test of time (and Google updates!). Fresh and relevant content is key and link building is in the past. Here is a similar blog on the Hummingbird release and some stats supporting it! http://addion.com/blog/secret-surviving-googles-hummingbird-addion

I think almost has changed now. But this post well defined the topic “What Does Google’s Hummingbird Update Mean For Your SEO Efforts? Nothing” Readers may also like – http://www.vocso.com/blog/google-hummingbird-a-new-strategy-for-perfect-search-results-on-google/

Brilliant article! Now that Google has rolled out recent interface changes like (http://www.chatmeter.com/google-local-changes-requiring-greater-review-management/) and launched Hummingbird, it will be interesting to see how local search is affected/evolves. Content is still king and SEO is far from dead!

Hi Joshua, good read! I have been researching for a while to get the less circulated information on the new (new?) algorithm overhaul introduced by Google. The information you have shared pretty much is what I hear from all the sources I have access to. What intrigues me is that, while there is this sudden talk about conversational search as a natural byproduct of voice search, I wonder what happens to the good old typed in search queries on the search engine? Sure for users who are less mobile and continue to use their desktop/ laptop stationed in their homes or offices, they will not take the pain to type a longer search query and continue to type in the usual query or short keywords they are used to. I guess we just have to wait and watch if these search results are affected, and if yes to what degree. For now it all boils down to the search intent.